I have been driving the area and so far have about 50 houses I am going to mail to.

Although you do want to be aware that investors will be driving hard bargains and not buying top dollar properties, so you may have better commissions with retail buyers!

I'm going to a conference in Chicago next week and thinking about driving up and meeting with an experienced investment real estate agent and possibly looking at some properties.My goal is to buy 1-2 properties this year. 

@Mark Creason  not necessarily nearby but about a 30 minute drive.

Determine if you have money to spend on a direct marketing campaign or if you're going to go free with driving for dollars, scanning craigslist, dropping your business card everywhere you go, etc.   

Not that I have anything to base that on.. other than when everyone in their brother enters a market you can have some price run up that is not substantiated by any factors other than investor driving the market.Also Property tax's are so dog gone high there...

I don't know anything about where you live but if you need to drive 20-30 minutes for lower priced houses(maybe 100-150k?)

People often feel they "have" to drive as hard a bargain as they can, but if it works for you, and it works for the seller, and everybody goes home feeling that they got what they wanted... that's a good deal, IMO.

Folks that think they are going to "just do" some niche don't seem to get it, like saying I only want to know how to drive a subcompact car or I only need to know how to boil eggs I'll never put the effort into making anything else.

Did some driving for dollars in one of the areas I want to farm.